


Fearful Symmetry

by Impractical Beekeeping (Impractical_Beekeeping)



Series: Songs of Expedience [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Explosives, Gambling, Gen, Guns, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Explicit Sex, Obsessive Behaviour, Poetry, Post Reichenbach, References to Suicide, Stalking, Tigers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-30
Updated: 2012-05-02
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impractical_Beekeeping/pseuds/Impractical%20Beekeeping
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian destroys things, but not, he thinks, the beautiful ones. Not anymore. There is a beauty in the process of destruction itself, but that is something else altogether.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Song of Myself

 

 

Sebastian Moran is being patient in a car park. He has a leather-bound copy of Leaves of Grass propped against the dash and a Webley Mark VI in his left hand. He enjoys the feel of the old steel beneath his fingers, warm and smooth and heavy. He is equally pleased by the slightly furry texture of the book's pages as he turns them, slowly.

Patience is an art. It is not about self-denial. It is about waiting for the perfect moment. Sebastian is very good at waiting. Waiting with his eye at the scope. Waiting with the best cards in his hand. Waiting for the perfect words to coalesce in his head. Waiting for his prey to make the wrong move, which is also, oh-so-beautifully, the right one.

Now he is waiting for a phone call to tell him that Jim Moriarty is free. The trial should be nearly finished now. Sebastian has been keeping up with the details, but from afar. Someone needs to run the shop, so to speak.

It practically runs itself, because Jim excels at the art of delegation. This leaves Sebastian with nothing but time: time to read, time to think, time to play cards, and time to study people. Specifically, people he will probably need to kill.

Irene Adler isn't dead, for example. She is in California. Sebastian has been given _carte blanche_ to bring her down, and he has been considering the possibilities. Now is not a good time, of course; Jim's long game is entering one of its more dynamic phases. But when it's all done, yes: California.

Sebastian lazily slides the barrel of the revolver against his faded jeans. Irene is not particularly interesting, but California has promise. The San Diego Zoo is constructing a new tiger habitat. It's costing them millions.

Tigers in captivity evoke such mixed feelings in him. Seeing them at all is a benediction. Seeing them surrounded by sticky-fingered children and their prosaic parents is something else entirely. Seeing them caged is a violation of natural law. It is still better than nothing.

He entertains a momentary fantasy in which some great catastrophe occurs (Fire? Earthquake?) and the tigers are released into the hills of San Diego. He thinks of them treading softly yet heavily over the grass of a public park, wide green eyes scanning for small furtive things...

It wouldn't be any good if it did happen, of course. There would still be humans about, and they have a nasty way of spoiling the most beautiful things. They have no respect.

Sebastian destroys things, but not, he thinks, the beautiful ones. Not anymore. There is a beauty in the process of destruction itself, but that is something else altogether.

The bomb and the bullet are deployed as Moriarty directs him, and Sebastian takes pride in doing it well and neatly and, wherever possible, aesthetically. It's something he enjoys, and conveniently, it's something the master criminal needs and is willing to pay him for. Realistically, this contract was his only possible option after the things he's done.

When allowed the decision, he'll always choose the rifle over explosives. He is good with explosives, of course. They require intelligence and attention to detail. They require fearlessness. In some cases, they even require artistry. But the rifle is more intimate, in his opinion. It needs a strange sort of empathy in the man who operates it. It demands patience and stillness and, to some extent, what he defines as love.

Love is a perfect and inexorable focus upon the beloved. It is ownership. It is a red dot wavering on a body in the darkness. It is perfect and complete understanding.

Sebastian is aware that this is not, generally, a popular philosophy. Most certainly not the way he applies it.

 _I act as the tongue of you_ , he reads, and his phone buzzes against the leather upholstery of the old Porsche.

"Sebastian," trills the Irishman's voice. "Be a love and take me away from all this. I'm a free man."

"I'm in the car park," he says. "I can be around in five."

He tucks the Webley into the glove compartment with care but leaves the book on the passenger seat.

Jim is easy to spot in his impeccable dove-grey suit. He positively seethes with energy as he slides into the seat beside Sebastian.

"Walt Whitman?" he asks, tossing the book into the back seat.

"Why not? I happen to enjoy him."

"Ah, Sebastian," his employer says, almost admonishingly. "You have such a beautiful soul."

 _I don't_ , he thinks, taking the gear shift in hand. _But I know how one's assembled._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song of Myself is a poem from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.


	2. Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves

Jim Moriarty likes to watch Sebastian read. He is stillness personified, just as he is when he has his eye to a rifle scope.

He finds the older man fascinating. He is so perfectly flawed.

Physically, he’s not terribly imposing. He’s of average height and build, and his otherwise fine features are somewhat marred by a crooked nose and a scarred eyebrow. He’d be pale yellow if it weren’t for his years of exposure to the sun, and his hair is a bit of a mess. He slouches about in broken-down denim and shapeless flannel shirts as if he’d never even met the military, let alone spent years in it. At times, he becomes virtually invisible by being ordinary.

What he does have is green-gold eyes and an unearthly, unshakeable air of calm. His teeth are sharp and surprisingly white when he shows them in one of his rare, always lopsided smiles.

He is a study in contradictions. He speaks flatly, economically, and most unmusically, yet he sometimes writes with an appreciation of language that borders on decadence. Raised in privilege, he lives in nearly complete indifference to the material world, with certain, very specific exceptions. His money (supplied by Jim) goes to books and guns. He plays cards compulsively, but he never loses much.

He left the army under a cloud, and the regiment he claims membership in appears to be fictitious. But Jim has seen his tags, his scars, and the way he shoots. The man saw service, he has no question.

If he is capable of genuine anger, Jim has yet to see it in seven years of acquaintance. The most he manages is mild irritation. He obeys orders so long as he agrees with them, which is very nearly always.

He is, in so many ways, the perfect companion.

***

Sebastian Moran has been both the pride and shame of the British Army. When he was eighteen, he saw the most beautiful thing in the world, and he killed it.

***

Colonel Sebastian Moran is a man who cannot exist anymore. He is extinct like the Caspian Tiger, but no one mourns his loss.

He is a lesson in the inevitable repercussions of complete obedience. He is the reason human weapons aren’t allowed.

***

It is easy to claim that the First Bangalore Pioneers never existed when nearly none of them survived. Their name alone was ludicrous, harkening back to the last days of the Indian Army and a steadily contracting British Empire.

What they were was a collection of useful madmen. What they did was what everyone else did, only better and faster. They were snipers and spotters and sappers. They were brilliant and undisciplined and terribly secret.

***

Moran is beautifully good with guns. He is capable of a stillness so perfect that it sends chills down the spines of other soldiers. It is rumoured that he is capable of stopping his heart and breath so they won’t interfere with a shot.

Moran comes from money. He doesn’t flaunt it, but he is well-educated. He is also, at the same time perhaps a little bit foreign, as one might expect from the son of an ambassador to Iran. His only apparent vice is a love of poetry. Despite this, he is well-liked.

He has a spotter and his name is Joe Richardson. He is funny and kind and younger than Moran. He is from Reigate and has a lovely voice.

Moran likes to recite poetry. Some of it is thematically appropriate (Kipling). Some of it is melancholy. Some of it is absurd.

“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care,” Moran will whisper into the radio, and Richardson will answer, “They sought it with forks and with hope.”

They have learned not to laugh. Moran’s smile is a small, private quirk to one side of his mouth. Richardson rolls his lower lip between his teeth instead.

***

They have been partnered together for a year and they’re drinking somewhat heavily when Richardson mentions he’s rather fond of William Blake. Moran asks how he can be, because the man was so clearly insane, “Not in the good way. It’s all blatant religious allegory.”

“I dunno... I like the one about the tiger,” Richardson says. “We had to learn it when I was at school. The others were completely shit, though.”

He recites it, and in a moment of madness, Sebastian tells him the Most Beautiful Thing, which he has never told anyone before, because it is also the Very Bad Thing.

“I killed a tiger once,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem the two soldiers quote is The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll. It is beautifully absurd.
> 
> Also, quoted in entirety, because damn it:
> 
> The Tyger
> 
> Tyger! Tyger! burning bright  
> In the forests of the night,  
> What immortal hand or eye  
> Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 
> 
> In what distant deeps or skies  
>  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?    
> On what wings dare he aspire?    
> What the hand dare seize the fire? 
> 
> And what shoulder, & what art.  
>  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?  
>  And when thy heart began to beat,    
> What dread hand? & what dread feet? 
> 
> What the hammer? what the chain?  
>  In what furnace was thy brain?    
> What the anvil? what dread grasp  
>  Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 
> 
> When the stars threw down their spears,    
> And watered heaven with their tears,    
> Did he smile his work to see?    
> Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 
> 
> Tyger! Tyger! burning bright  
>  In the forests of the night,    
> What immortal hand or eye  
>  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 
> 
> -William Blake
> 
> Finally, the chapter title (Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves) is a quotation from Oscar Wilde's poem, the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Read it if you haven't.


	3. Deaths and Entrances

The morning of the perfect day comes quickly, and Sebastian showers and dresses and occupies himself with the paper. It is splashed with lurid headlines and photographs of the consulting detective-turned-criminal. He eats, with disinterest: two slices of toast and an apple.

Jim breezes in half an hour later in the Westwood and a leather-collared coat. The buttons are, ridiculously, skull-stamped. “Morning, darlin’,” he says, and leans down to slide the cold weight of the Beretta 92FX INOX against his jaw. “I’m taking this.”

He nods, and in a perfect parody of cozy domesticity gets up and makes Jim Moriarty a cup of tea. Sebastian never drinks tea. He hates the jittery feeling stimulants bring. They make stillness an impossibility. Despite this, he is good at preparing it.

It is easy to do him these little kindnesses as if they meant something. He does not mistake them for trust or for love. Jim is, himself, capable of neither. It’s comfortable.

Sebastian checks and rechecks his bag. He hooks his foot against the warm oak chair and drums his fingers lightly over his black denim thigh. He sends a quick text to the Czech who is watching Baker Street. Jim flits about the flat like a demented moth, humming to himself. Sebastian cannot place the tune, but of course, he is tone deaf and never could.

They get in the car, and Sebastian takes them to Bart’s. He lets Jim out and it is only when he arrives in the car park, when he’s taking his bag out of the boot, that he sees the book.

There’s a note in Moriarty’s spiky hand:

_Tiger-boy,_

_Today is the perfect day. Thought you might enjoy this one._

_-Jim_

It’s black cloth with illegible silver lettering on the spine. He opens it.

_Songs of Experience_

_William Blake_

_Minton, Balch and Co._

_New York_

_1927_

The pages are delicate vellum. They smell of dust.

He shoves it back in the boot and feels something dangerous tickle the back of his throat. It feels like anger. It might be grief.

He puts it aside.

***

Sebastian Moran is in a stairwell with a lovingly assembled L96A1, waiting for his spotter to make contact, eye to the scope. He has two objectives and all the time in the world. One, he will observe the meeting of Jim Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. If needs be, he will intervene, although that was not discussed. Two, he will act upon the outcome of that meeting.

There are two probable outcomes to the rooftop meeting, and two probable responses.

Outcome one: Sherlock Holmes does not jump to his death. Moran shoots the doctor.

Outcome two: Sherlock Holmes dies. Moran lets the doctor go.

The thing about Jim is, he’s impulsive, but he’s also very good at getting what make people tick. He says Sherlock Holmes will die, so die he will. He is equally sure that John Watson will make an appearance at Bart’s (he is not there now). The man has the loyalty of a spaniel, and despite everything that has gone down, he’s still running after his master. Last night, they ran hand in hand. They were cuffed together at the time.

Moran has become intimately familiar with the doctor over the last couple of weeks. He’s watched him in the Tesco late at night, and at the clinic during the day. He’s seen him storm out of the flat at Baker Street, and he’s seen him hauled away in a police car. If he was an artist, he could sketch the passionate folds of the man’s face without a reference. He looks almost disappointed in the times without danger.

***

Sebastian Moran is not an adrenaline junkie. He finds poetry in focus. He enjoys the details of preparation (assembling the gun, establishing his position) because they are precursors to the perfect shot.

He watches Jim perched on the rooftop, thrumming with thwarted energy. He hates him, a little. He banishes it. He stills himself.

Sherlock Homes arrives, stands still. Moriarty buzzes around him like a horsefly. 

Jim has the Beretta, but Moran feels the customary disquiet that comes with having a target compromised by interference.

The Czech texts. John Watson has returned to the flat and promply departed again.

Sherlock Holmes has grasped Jim Moriarty by the lapels. Despite their height differential, the angle is bad. Jim is in the way.

Holmes releases him.

Moriarty steps back.

Moran stills his breath.

Holmes steps onto the ledge. 

Moriarty wheels away.

Holmes is laughing. He skips away from the ledge.

The two men are pulled together again as if by magnetic force.

They are talking.

Holmes orbits Moriarty.

They are still. They could be lovers, eye to eye.

***

_You have eyes like... a... fucking tiger, Richardson gasps into his ear, and Sebastian doesn’t know whether the small sound that escapes him then is because he’s crying or he’s coming._

***

Moriarty is smiling.

They shake hands.

Moriarty is nodding like a broken puppet. His hand is in his coat.

His mouth is open, as if to scream.

The Beretta.

He has just...

Moran exhales, unblinking, as Moriarty rocks backward in a spray of blood, as Holmes reels away, coat flapping around him.

Moran stills.

He could take Holmes now.

That was not the order.

That was not the order.

He folds the gun away.

He goes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deaths and Entrances is a Dylan Thomas volume.


	4. Les Fleurs du Mal

Sebastian drives home to his flat and leaves the damned book burning a hole in the boot.

He cleans his guns. He reads. He checks his accounts and is not surprised to see that he is still being paid as he was before.

He tries not to think of tigers. He finds it easy not to think of Jim, even as he watches over his empire. If someone finds the body, it never makes the news. He suspects it was taken care of, by someone. It's not important.

He dutifully maintains specific contacts, but allows others to lapse. He watches dispassionately as things fall apart. It is to be expected that certain arrangements cannot hold without the touch of the man who took such joy in managing them. Unless someone asks him for information, he doesn't volunteer. Command has never appealed to him much.

He does not go to California. She's still there, he knows, but he feels no pressing need to find her now.

***

Grafitti springs up around London. _I believe in Sherlock Holmes_ , he reads on buildings and Tube platforms and bus stops. Clearly someone is taking a more official interest in recent events, too. Who, he doesn't know, but certain groups of people are being apprehended, and it no longer looks coincidental. _It could be Holmes' brother,_ he thinks. But it could be John Watson.

It could be something or someone stranger still. What, he does not articulate, even to himself. He is good at finding signs, at recognising patterns. This feels like something rustling in the grass.

The thought of the unfinished mission is like an ulcer. It eats at him like the book in the boot of his car.

***

A rusty sense of duty emerges, insists that he look for the doctor again. He's been staying with his sister, Harriet. It doesn't last for long.

He watches the man as he used to watch him. He looks tired and stiff and sad as he returns to Baker Street. He doesn't go out much these days. _You could be my target_ , Sebastian thinks to him. _You_ are _mine._

A flat opens up across the street from 221B. In an uncharacteristic moment of impulse, Sebastian takes on the lease, leaving almost everything behind him when he goes. It's not a particularly nice flat. It's not important.

He can't seem to concentrate when he reads anymore. He turns pages, and realises they have failed to leave any lasting impression on his mind. By day, he surfs the internet and watches the house across the street. By night, he looks for card games. That, at least, is something he can still focus on.

He watches the faces and hands across the table from him with a mile-long stare. He plays. He wins, and the predatory thing inside him unfurls itself a little more each time he does.

***

One morning he follows John Watson to Tesco (it's efficient, really - he needs shopping of his own), and when he exits at an entirely coincidental-looking distance behind him, he sees the familiar figure stumble over a grate at the street crossing. He falls to one knee and several tins of beans go rolling into the gutter as the bag bursts upon impact.

 _Never make contact with the target_ , but of course, working for Jim overwrote that lesson years ago.

"Oh, bloody hell," John Watson says, surveying the remains of his shopping as he rights himself.

"We are all lying in the gutter," Sebastian states absently, and bends down to pull beans to safety and stack them on the kerb.

"...but some of us are looking at the stars?" the doctor concludes, with a startled laugh.

"Well... yes. Possibly." Sebastian flashes his teeth at him, and starts to move away.

"Hey, thanks," John Watson says, touching his arm before he can. "Don't know what came over me."

Lack of sleep, Sebastian thinks, but he hovers for a moment. "You okay, then?"

"Just about," he says, with a frown. "Not sure how I'm going to get this home now." He exhales a small sound of disappointment. His other carrier bag is full to straining.

Sebastian remembers something he used to do in the army. "We're neighbours, I think. On Baker Street? Here." He strips off his flannel overshirt, and lays it on the ground. They pile cans into it and form a sort of makeshift sack.

"I should have thought of that myself," John says. "I've got this jumper."

"S'all right. The wool would stretch a bit. This at least will take you to yours in safety."

"Well, if you don't mind," John says, his blue eyes creasing at the perceived kindness of the stranger. "I'll only be a moment once we're there."

They walk together in what feels like companionable silence, until John starts and apologetically offers his own name. It occurs to Sebastian that he hasn't really planned for this contingency.

"Ah, Bill. Bill Richardson," he says, because it's the first name he can think of. _What a terrible name,_ he thinks. Not important.

"So, in the forces, Bill?" John asks, and Sebastian thanks the god he doesn't believe in that he gave the man a lie, because he's lived with a detective for years and of course some things were bound to rub off.

"Yes. Yes, I was. Good guess."

"It's the scar," John says, easily. "I've seen a few before. Rifle scope, was it?"

Sebastian nods. He is chatting with John Watson. It's such a simple thing.

"I was a medic. We notice these things."

"Afghanistan?" Sebastian asks, because he can.

"Yeah. Got shot, so..." He shrugs a bit. "You?"

"I was there for a bit. Not something I talk about much. You know."

John does, of course. "I do," he says, and they're nearly there. "Can you wait for a second? I'll just run these in and get your shirt back to you."

Sebastian nods and watches him balance the bag and the bundle with practiced ease as he opens the door. _If you knew how many times I've seen you do that_ , he thinks, and flexes his foot against the step as he waits.

He hears voices inside. Mrs. Hudson, of course. The landlady.

He is still.

"And I'm back, " John says, folding up Sebastian's shirt. "Thanks. That was a good idea you had." He offers him his hand, and they shake, awkwardly.

"Well. See you around."

"See you," Sebastian says, and returns to his flat.

***

They bump into one another from time to time after that, sometimes wholly accidentally.

In a moment of madness, Sebastian buys some tea one Sunday.

The next time they meet, he invites John in for a cup. It's what people do.

Sebastian even drinks some himself. It's not going to kill him, is it? They talk about books, the weather, the clinic, and Mrs. Hudson. Sebastian never asks about Sherlock Holmes and John never mentions him. It's better that way.

"Play cards, much?" John asks, looking around at the cheaply furnished kitchen. Sebastian has left a poker deck on the table. The guns are in his bedroom. He's not stupid.

"I do, yes." Sebastian slides his fingers across them, lovingly. "Keeps me occupied." He touches his canine with his tongue. "I gamble a little. Sometimes."

John smiles ruefully. "I never could. Too many addictive personalities in my life," he says. "Not that you... You know what I mean."

Oh, he does.

"My sister's a drinker. And my flatmate... well. He, um. All sorts of things."

Well, indeed.

"My father gambled away all his money while I was in the army," Sebastian says, so John won't have to keep talking. "I don't let it get the better of me."

"Well. Good. That's good."

 _How did we get here,_ Sebastian wonders. _What am I doing?_

They could be friends, these two men. Friends who never discuss anything terribly personal. It's nice. It's comfortable. And for all that John is just a shadow of his former self, he is precisely that. Comfortable. It's in his cheerful jumpers and his weary smile. He's been falling apart, and he still goes to the clinic every day to put other people back together. He is a good man.

He is absolutely not the pathetic cur Moriarty liked to call him. He's funny, and he's kind, and he's strong. It's a shame.

 _Sherlock Holmes never knew what he had,_ Sebastian thinks, and he shows him out with his crooked smile.

_See you._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) is a book of poems by Charles Baudelaire. After he wrote it, he was fined 300 francs and it was banned in in France until 1949. Its preface suggests boredom is the worst of all miseries. :)
> 
> "We're all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" comes from Oscar Wilde. It just happened, so I let it.


	5. Une Saison en Enfer

It's a Sunday afternoon, and they're drinking tea and watching telly in his flat when it happens.

The Wellington Arch has been blown up. It's a Sunday. People are there with their families.

John drops his cup and they watch the brown liquid slowly spread across the table in silence.

"Oh god," he says. He grips the table with whitened knuckles and Sebastian stares and everything slows.

Of course.

He wired it for Jim. Months ago, in fact. Why no one noticed before now...

It's a sign. It's a track in the long grass. Something is coming, on heavy velvet feet.

"I've got to go," John says, in a strangled voice. "Doctor. They'll need people. Bill, I have to go, okay?"

Sebastian is frozen, foot hooked around the rung of his chair like an anchor. He nods, too late. "Yes," he says, as the door swings closed.

They will.

***

It's a bad week for London. It's a bad week for Sebastian Moran.

_What did you do, Jim? What does this mean?_

He sleeps fitfully at best.

***

_He's eighteen years old and the man hands him a rifle._

_Look. There he is._

_The grass rustles and Sebastian steadies the polished wood of the stock against his shoulder._

_Be still._

_There it is. It's a velvet thing, in black and burnt orange. Its eyes are green and gold and without fear._

_It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Lush, and wild, and burning with life, the way he feels himself burn. His heart stops._

_Now, the man says._

_He squeezes the trigger._

***

_He's thirty-one, and he's stretched out in the dirt with his eye on the scope, just like always._

_Now, Richardson says, and Moran squeezes the trigger._

_Now and now and now._

_And they go back to camp and everything's silent until the next morning, when the officers come and everything burns._

_A_ mistake, _they say, and_ civilians _, and_ wrong _._

_Sebastian lies in his bunk and stares at the insides of his eyelids and sees the tiger falling again._

_Be still, Richardson says, and touches his face with damp fingers._

_Be still, and he walks away._

_Be still, so Sebastian lies still until he hears the gunshot._

_He stops his heart._

_He takes his rifle with him._

***

Sebastian wakes up and takes the book out of the car and puts it on the fire, even though it's August. It burns beautifully. It is perfect.

***

He finds a game and when a gawky young man with fair hair and brown eyes sits down at the table, he stares at him and thinks,  _I see you._

He says his name is  _Ronald Adair_ , and he fidgets at the loose cuffs of his oversized shirt with trembling, nicotine-stained fingers, and he loses and he loses.

He's thin and he's shy, and his voice sounds raw. He taps his foot under the table like he's transmitting telegraphy. His lips are bitten ragged and his pupils shine with something even Sebastian knows is some sort of drug.

And he's so very stupid, because his is not a face that can be disguised, no matter what feckless expression he chooses to plaster over it.

 _Sherlock Holmes,_  Sebastian thinks, and he stills himself, and he stares, and he plays the game.

Three days later, and he's back again, twisting in his seat like a rabbit in a snare.

 _Cocaine_ , Sebastian thinks, watching him rubbing at his arms.  _Intravenous._

When he wins a few too many hands and a not-inconsequential sum of money, Sebastian waits for him to leave the table and then, ten counts later, follows him outside.

"You're smarter than you look," he says. "Was that a joke?"

Everything he's heard about the man is true. He summons tears like it's the easiest thing in the world and sobs out a ridiculous tale of hardship and confusion.

This is going to be so simple, after all.

"Can you do it again?" Sebastian asks, running his tongue over his teeth. "Because if you can..."

He invites him to several more games over the course of the week, and every night he goes home afterwards and lies on his bed with a gun in his hand. He's listening to the sound of invisible wind rustling through grass.

 _I am going to put you down_ , he whispers.  _Like a dog._

***

Getting hold of the Rohypnol is nearly as easy as getting hold of the two Russians. He pours himself a whiskey, polishes the Sig Sauer 226R, and sticks it in the drinks cupboard behind the bottle of metaxa left behind by the previous tenant. There is very little whiskey left in the bottle, so he drops the tablets in it and watches them dissolve.

A cab arrives, and Holmes gets out. He glances at the window across the street, where a figure is moving about, silhouetted against the lights in 221B.

 _Tonight_ , Sebastian thinks, and _John will never need to know about any of this._

He wipes condensation from the table with his polishing cloth and answers the door.

"Please, " he says, and nods to one of the chairs.

***

Andrei and Yevgeny arrive. Sebastian pours them vodka, and for Holmes, the rest of the whiskey. He'll have plenty of time. He knows the man barely drinks a thing.

They play, and as agreed, the Russians kick up a fuss when they lose. Sebastian sees them off with the gun, and lays it on the table.

 _You are mine_ , he thinks, and salutes his partner of the evening.

Holmes drinks, wrinkling his nose at the taste of the whiskey.

"We've done rather well tonight," Moran says. He watches his quarry, as if from a distance, but he can see the rapid pulse in his long pale throat.

"The gun was a surprise," Holmes says, and he's forgotten to modulate his voice to sound like lost little Ronald Adair.

"It shouldn't be," Moran says. "The thing about me, is, I like to hunt. I get what I am owed."

For all that Holmes is a hardened junkie, the Rohypnol is clearly having an effect now. Moran has no idea what cocaine and alcohol and sedatives might be doing, all jumbled together in his blood, but it's probably nothing good.

Perhaps it burns.

_Perhaps it should._

"I like tigers," Moran says conversationally. "Killed one once."

Holmes gazes at him with glassy tea-coloured eyes. They're a lie, which seems appropriate under the circumstances.

"People are easier. Easy to find. Easy to kill."

Not a word. Not a squeak. Interesting in a man who apparently lives to hear the sound of his own voice.

"John Watson, say," Moran whispers, leaning into the stillness.  _The friend you don't deserve._ "He's across the street. He is mine."

Holmes fixes him with distant eyes and says, coldly, "Who is he?" 

"Who are you?" Moran asks, but it's a statement. "You are a dead man. And the best thing about a dead man is that no one cares when he dies again."

Holmes twists himself out of the chair and stumbles to the window. Moran waits, unblinking.

"You're supposed to be good with detail," he says.

"I am," Holmes states, sounding of all things, wounded.

"Not good enough. I knew who you were the moment I saw you."

"Did you," he says, drawing the words out like they bore him. "What was it?"

"Your face," Moran says levelly. 

"I'm a hunter," he explains, running his eyes over Holmes, almost lovingly, because it is nearly time. "I study my prey."

He feels strong and free and  _right_  as he stands and reaches for the gun.

"I know Jim is dead, but that's no reason to stop now."

"No?" Holmes asks, rolling his head against the glass, eyes drifting shut. "What was he to you?"

_Everything. Nothing at all._

"A means to an end. He let me do what I like."

Moran raises the gun. This won't be perfect, and he finds he feels no regret. None at all.

"I have several guns," he says. "This is the one I want to use."

Holmes is sliding down the glass, millimetre by millimetre.

 _Yes, look me in the eye,_  Moran thinks.

"The doctor is next," he says. It's a lie.

 _Mere men cannot be entrusted with beautiful things_.

He stills his breath.

_Now._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's that.
> 
> This chapter is probably the one that makes the least amount of sense if you haven't read the previous story. Sorry about that!
> 
> The chapter title translates to "A Season in Hell," and is also the title of a book of poetry by Arthur Rimbaud.
> 
> I certainly hadn't planned to write this story in one day, but I simply couldn't stop. My apologies for mistakes you may find as a result.
> 
> I've read an awful lot of fan fiction that depicts Sebastian as a rough and surly boy-toy for Moriarty, and while it doubtless makes for a sexy sort of read, I wanted to do something different. 
> 
> Reading the description of Sebastian Moran in the Adventure of the Empty House made me decide he read poetry. The ACD canon Sebastian was a writer, so it's not completely insane that he would care for words. He is extremely well-educated, which is frequently forgotten by both fanfic and screen writers.
> 
> I recently read an article on snipers that pointed out that they, more than other soldiers, tend to see their human targets as just that: human. Watching another person so closely apparently creates a strange sort of empathy.There is an intense need to feel moral justification as a result. The article suggested that snipers initially present as more psychologically sound than other enlisted men at the end of service, but as time goes on, it is clear that this may not remain true.
> 
> The next story is John's POV.


End file.
